Law 79/2015 of 29 July stipulates that “a family doctor will be attributed to every child.” The document explains that the step will be upheld by boosting the number of general and family medical professionals working in Portugal’s National Health Service (SNS).
To ensure all children have a family doctor, the new law states that the government will conduct an “exhaustive mapping” of all children who do not have a family doctor assigned to them.
An “automatic process of attributing a family doctor at the request of legal guardians” will be created for newborns, and the law stresses that “in no circumstances will other citizens be deprived of their right to a family doctor.”
The law, which also covers foreign children resident in Portugal, will come into force following the upcoming general elections on 4 October, on the approval of the subsequent State Budget.
News of the move has been well-received by the medical community.
In comments to The Portugal News, the Portuguese Association for General and Family Medicine (APMGF) said it “welcomes” the publication of the new law, and is “available” to work with authorities on its application.
However, the APMGF believes the measure is not one that can be introduced imminently.
“It is currently not yet possible to bring this intention to fruition as there is a lack of family doctors in the country and especially in certain regions”, explained Dr. Rui Artur Nogueira, president of the association, adding that the APMGF has “been working on different levels for more than 10 years so that we can have universal coverage of Family Physicians.”
Dr. Nogueira says changes to civil service retirement laws introduced two years ago saw the availability of family doctors at health facilities reduced; changes he describes as a “political irresponsibility” which the association warned about at the time.
According to the APMGF, the latest report from the Ministry of Health, presented in May 2015, shows that there are currently over 1.2 million residents enrolled at health centres without a family doctor and, the association estimates, “it would take 800 more family doctors to meet the needs.”
However, Dr. Nogueira stresses, the lack of family doctors is “very localised” and says around 500 more doctors are needed in the Lisbon and Tagus Valley alone.
“In other words, the problem has a very large regional asymmetry. This is one of the issues that concern us as it will not be easy to resolve in the near future.”
The APMGF believes that from 2016 the problem of a lack of doctors will start to be solved, “since we will enter a phase of increased availability of family doctors, which corresponds to a rise in the number of enrolments in medical schools from 2004.”
But, he reiterates, the shortage in the Lisbon and Tagus Valley region “will persist until the end of the decade”, so while the new law is “understandable and desirable”, it will be “difficult to achieve in the Lisbon and Tagus Valley, particularly in some of the needier health centres.”
A positive aspect of the new law, Dr. Nogueira says, is the fact that it will only be applied after the next State Budget, “which seems to mean that there are investments to make and political options to plan, so as to achieve what has been stipulated.”
Meanwhile, the topic of family doctors – or shortage thereof – was also addressed by the ruling centre-right coalition, who in their recently unveiled ‘Portugal in Front’ electoral campaign promised a family doctor for everyone by the end 2017.
Launched on Wednesday evening the Social Democrat-People’s Party (PSD-CDS) bid for votes focuses primarily on economic growth and social development.
Also among the changes pledged by the coalition within the area of health is the creation of an incentive scheme to reward top performance, the approval of measures to regulate school menus and the supply of food and beverages to establishments of public administration in general, and the construction of a new hospital in Eastern Lisbon.